


Not My Boy

by Pleasebrushyourteeth



Category: Ratchet & Clank
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 09:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6900550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pleasebrushyourteeth/pseuds/Pleasebrushyourteeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lawrence reflects on the triumphs and misdeeds of the child he helped raise. Reboot-verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not My Boy

Lawrence sighed for what felt like the 100th time that night. It was 3 in the morning, the concert was in 5 hours, and he still hadn’t perfected his contribution to the ending song. He knew he shouldn’t have let his bandmates add a kazoo solo.  Oh, well, though. What was done was done. As a general rule, Lawrence tried not to dwell on the past. If he did, he probably would’ve quit both his band and his job as family butler a long time ago. However, in the dead of night, when there were no screams of “Lawrence!” echoing through the house, when it was just him and his thoughts, he sometimes caught himself reflecting on his life experiences and the people that appeared in them.

Tonight, he caught himself thinking about the boy.

Lawrence could still remember the boy as a babe, wrapped tightly in soft linen, squirming and wailing in his grasp. He had felt so tiny in his arms, so powerless. Lawrence soon learned, however, that this seemingly weak boy had both a knack for mischief and an iron-clad will. He was a horrid child, really, always screaming and fighting. Lawrence could easily recall the numerous dents and scrapes he received from the boy, the seemingly never-ending insults he suffered. It didn’t help that alongside having completely indulgent parents, the boy had an ex-con for a grandmother who was constantly encouraging his bad behavior. With a family and boy like that, Lawrence sure had his work cut out for him.

Still, there were those moments that made all of the attacks worth it. He recalled the boy’s first birthday, his first day of school, his first date. He could still remember the day the boy received a special award for a particularly good invention, and how the boy had turned around and waved, “Look, Lawrence!” He wished he had been manufactured with the ability to smile, because if he had, he would’ve been beaming.

The boy had started inventing as a child, making small contraptions and robotic creatures to amuse himself in his plans for playground domination. As he grew older, he found his niche: weapons. The bigger and more outrageous the gun, the better. As a piece of machinery himself, Lawrence was impressed by the boy’s skill with metal and circuitry. Lawrence was especially proud when the boy decided to put his talents towards the good of the entire galaxy by joining the Galactic Rangers, the premiere peace-keeping organization in all of Solana. It would do the boy good, he thought at the time, to have his energy directed in what seemed like a positive endeavor.

But as the years went by, the boy’s face was slowly replaced by that of a man’s. And not just any man’s; that of a bitter, depressed man, weary from a dead-end job and ready to explode at any provocation. Lawrence could still remember the dead expression in the boy’s once wonder-filled eyes, the hunched-over physique from long nights of working with no reward, the seemingly permanent frown plastered in place of a bright smile. Lawrence had tried to reach out to the boy, but each and every time he pushed the butler away, and as a simple robot, Lawrence had no choice but to know his place and stand back.

In such a short time, the boy Lawrence had raised had become an empty husk of a man, and it was this empty husk that was displayed on the holo-vid as “Public Enemy #1.” The husk wasn’t the boy anymore, Lawrence rationalized. The boy had long since died a lonely death, and the husk had taken his place. That’s why Lawrence felt no remorse when the mob came to the house, assaulting him with tirades and accusations. That’s why Lawrence felt no shame in answering the reporter’s questions when they asked him what it was like to help raise a monster. That’s why Lawrence held nothing but respect for the grieving family that the husk left behind.

Because as Lawrence would always insist, Dr. Nefarious, Mad Scientist, was not his boy.


End file.
